The fox, he felt, had never seen his past disposed of like a fall of water. He had never measured off his day in moments: another-...-another--another. But now, thrown down so deeply in himself, into the darkness of the well, surprised by pain and hunger, might he not revert to an earlier condition, regain capacities which formerly were useless to him, pass from animal to Henry, become human in his prison, X his days, count, wait, listen for another--another--another--another?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The purpose of ritual for men is to learn the rules of power and competition. Watching sports together, for example, they see the ...formal enactment of ritual, become loyal to a team, learn to conceal their vulnerability. The purpose of ritual for women (going to lunch together, sharing a favorite salon, etc.) is to learn how to make human connections. They are often more intimate and vulnerable with one another than they are with their men, and taking care of other women teaches them to take care of themselves. In these formal ways, men and women domesticate their emotional lives. But their strategies are different, their biological itineraries are different. His sperm needs to travel, her egg needs to settle down. It's astonishing that they survive happily at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I am willing, for a money consideration, to test this physical strength, this nervous force, and muscular power with which I've be...en gifted, to show that they will bear a certain strain. If I break down, if my brain gives way under want of sleep, my heart ceases to respond to the calls made on my circulatory system, or the surcharged veins of my extremities burst--if, in short, I fall helpless, or it may be, dead on the track, then I lose my money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

He had come down, He said, to clean the earthOf the dirtiness of war....Now tell of why His power failed Him there?His power did not fail. It was that, simply,He found how much the people wanted war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the ass...istance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist. I do not think it possible that anyone born an Aristotelian can become a Platoni...st; and I am sure that no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. They are two classes of man, beside which it is next to impossible to conceive a third. The one considers reason a quality or attribute; the other considers it a power.... Aristotle was, and still is, the sovereign lord of the understanding--the faculty judging by the senses. He was a conceptualist, and never could raise himself into that higher state, which was natural to Plato, and has been so to others, in which the understanding is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, inborn, essential truths.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside, to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud--wha...t stirs you if the senses show you nothing? Light stirs you, formed in Heaven, by itself, or by His will Who sends it down to us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Art should exhilarate, and throw down the walls of circumstance on every side, awakening in the beholder the same sense of univers...al relation and power which the work evinced in the artist, and its highest effect is to make new artists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

If your friend has displeased you, you shall not sit down to consider it, for he has already lost all memory of the passage, and h...as doubled his power to serve you, and, ere you can rise up again, will burden you with blessings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual fo...r the necessary and talk down to the young. Let them then become organs of the Holy Ghost; let them be lovers; let them behold truth; and their eyes are uplifted, their wrinkles smoothed, they are perfumed again with hope and power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »